IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT:HURRICANE SANDY SPECIAL REPORT: The storm, the aftermath, and the impacts of climate change; PLUS: A reminder of one Presidential candidate's position on federal disaster relief --- Mitt Romney has called for privatizing it ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

As Hurricane Sandy churned inland as a downgraded storm, residents up and down the battered mid-Atlantic region woke on Tuesday to lingering waters, darkened homes and the daunting task of cleaning up from once-in-a-generation storm surges and their devastating effects.

The floodwaters that poured into New York's deepest subway tunnels may pose the biggest obstacle to the city's recovery from the worst natural disaster in the transit system's 108-year history. Critical electrical equipment could be ruined. Track beds could be covered with debris. Corrosive salt water could have destroyed essential switches, lights, turnstiles and the power-conducting third rail.
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There has always been flooding in the tunnels, which collect storm water constantly, even in the lightest of rains. But authorities said there has never been anything like the damage inflicted by Hurricane Sandy.

Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. [...] We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.

I was just thinking about what it would be like if Romney were to realize his dream of privatizing disaster relief. And I remembered that after Katrina Bush first put his political henchman Karl Rove in charge of reconstruction efforts. Does everyone recall what they specifically had in mind?

Yesterday, while Superstorm Sandy passed over Washington, I hunkered down in front of my television and watched coverage of the storm. As I flipped between cable and network news shows, I was subjected to the same endless parade of reporters swaying in the wind, wading through flooded streets, and talking about projected catastrophic damage. But throughout it all, there were no mentions of the dramatic increases in extreme weather and no mentions of the influence of a warming planet on extreme storms like Sandy.

But how, precisely, can we say that Hurricane Sandy, and the extensive damage it will soon cause, are related to climate change? You have to be careful, given that a Category 1 hurricane in October is not itself unusual—and what’s really unique about Sandy is its collision with another, extratropical or winter storm system. Still, there is much that can be said here, even though scientists are careful to emphasize the remaining uncertainties...

Scientists told us a storm like Sandy would be catastrophic. When will we listen?
...[I]t’s not just about what we knew—it’s also what we know going forward. We know that if you think this is bad, well, global warming will make it still worse in the future.

But the possible effect of warming on hurricanes is one of the less perfectly understood aspects of climate science, and there’s still a lot of natural variability at work that makes it difficult to fingerprint the human influence of a major storm.
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Climate change is just one more factor contributing to the growing danger from extreme weather. That’s why we need to build societies—and infrastructure—that can be resilient in the face of a natural disaster, or an unnatural one.
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We don’t demand absolute certainty before we take action in foreign policy, the economy or health. We’d be fools to wait until there’s perfect scientific consensus on the role that global warming may be playing in tropical storms before we take action to prepare for both. “Anyone who says there’s hasn’t been a dramatic change in weather patterns has been denying reality,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters today. “We need to make sure that if there is weather like this we are more prepared and protected than we have been before.” As 8 million struggle without power in Sandy’s wake, that much should be painfully obvious.

The hedge expressed by journalists is that many variables go into creating a big storm, so the size of Hurricane Sandy, or any specific storm, cannot be attributed to climate change. That’s true, and it’s based on good science. However, that statement does not mean that we cannot say that climate change is making storms bigger. It is doing just that—a statement also based on good science, and one that the insurance industry is embracing, by the way.

"The irony is that the two presidential candidates decided not to speak about climate change, and now they are seeing the climate speak to them," said Tidwell. "That's really what's happening here. The climate is now speaking to them --- and to everyone else."

On Monday, a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, or PNAS, concluded that large Katrina-sized hurricanes were twice as likely to form off the United States' southeast coast in hotter years than they were in colder years.

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

The Macondo well blowout on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico lays bare just how little scientists know about that great expanse of saltwater and its creatures, but in fishing communities from Florida to Louisiana, some people have vital questions of their own.

The idea behind the sculpture that appeared on the University of Wyoming campus about 16 months ago was simple but provocative: a swirl of dead wood and lumps of coal, intended to show the link between global warming and the pine beetle infestation that has ravaged forests across the Rockies.

A week of protests against the planned expansion of a petrochemical plant in the port city of Ningbo turned violent on Friday and Saturday when demonstrators attacked police cars and tossed bricks and water bottles at officers, according to accounts from participants posted on the Internet.

Generations of shrimpers, crabbers and oystermen have set out from this bayou village to net their catch. They share an emotional bond with Iowa's farmers: Both harvest nature's bounty to earn a livelihood. These fishermen depend on the sea, just as the nation's top corn growers rely on the rich Midwest soil.

The hour-long report on the fossil-industry and right-wing climate science denial movement broadcast on PBS Frontline Wednesday night raises a key issue. Did deniers win their fight to stop action on global warming by killing it in Congress and keeping it out of the presidential campaign?

Human activity is affecting Earth in many ways, but a new study suggests that continued population growth and its impact on climate and ecology could trigger a more profound chain reaction of effects within little more than a decade.

Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.

It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. "Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake" footing. That simply won't be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It's not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
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"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."

Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, says there's no question that the influence of his group and others like it has been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science. "If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there's been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political," he said.
...Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it."

Dr. George Lakoff made a good point when he said we need to consider this question not in the context of direct causation, but rather in the context of systemic causation, lest we experience disaster a la the Groundhog Day movie.

Yes, the system of global warming induced climate change is affecting all weather worldwide, including Hurricane-Superstorm Sandy, now that we have entered The Anthropocene Epoch, a.k.a. The Sixth Mass Extinction.